Behind the Scenes at Ilium Software

Monthly Archives: August 2007

You can all be my guinea pigs! I don’t know if you remember (and 10 points to anyone who does) but several months ago, I added a handy little script to the home page of our site that would automatically redirect users to the mobile version if they were browsing on a mobile device. We tested it a lot, but I also wrote a post about it right here on the blog, to ask you guys for help to make sure you didn’t find any problems. Everything seemed to be going great, until Ellen found an issue no one else noticed, so I had to go back to the drawing board.

Well, even though it took a while, I finally had time to fix the script – hopefully for good. We tested it every way we could think of in the office, and I’m confident enough to put it online today. So, guinea pigs, do you want to try it out for me and make sure you don’t have any trouble? Here’s the behavior you should expect from our home page now:

If you’re on your desktop, you should never, ever see the mobile version, unless you specifically click a link to go there

If you visit www.iliumsoft.com on a mobile device, it should automatically redirect you to the mobile version. If you decide you really want to be on the “big” version of the site, and you click the “Visit Main Website” link at the bottom of the mobile version, you should be taken to our regular site, and you should stay there

So, if you check it out and think you’re being sent to the mobile site when you should be on the main site (or vice versa) please just drop a comment in this post and let me know what happened and what you saw, so I can fix it. Thanks!

ListPro 5.0 is officially out and so far the response is great. We’re really glad that so many of you like it. One tricky aspect of ListPro, however, is that the flexibility that makes it so popular, also allows each person to use the software in a completely different way. As a result, the feature request lists for ListPro are longer and more varied than for any other product we’ve ever released. Each person wants different features based on the way they use the software.

Something that many of you already know is that we place a lot of weight on the opinions of our customers. We keep careful track of what you are requesting, and when it comes time to create a new version we use those lists (made in ListPro I might add) to guide us in our development.

So, ListPro 5.0 out, you’ve given it a try, and you discovered we didn’t include the one feature you reallywanted to see. Now is your chance to chime in with “Next time you have to add this!” or”Please fix that!” or even “You’re perfect! Never change!” (Hey, we can dream can’t we!)

And finally, if you don’t feel like posting here, always feel free to email your ideas to us at support@iliumsoft.com .

One of the most fun parts of my job is wandering into the bookstores every week or so, and finding that one of our products has been written up or mentioned in “real” magazine.

PDA Essentials Magazine had a fabulous writeup of eWallet in their last issue. It’s on the stands in the U.S. now; I think it’s already gone in the U.K. I knew it was coming – someone had told Kevin about it on the phone, and Judy mentioned it as part of a comment to our “Hidden Features of eWallet” post, but I had no idea it was going to be so extensive. Or so flattering.

We’ll be adding some quotes from it to our website next week – Julie’s been tied up with the ListPro release all this week – including my favorite: “If you want to securely protect confidential information on a PDA or smartphone, eWallet wins the battle of the wallet wars hand down“.

It’s been a long wait for many loyal ListPro fans but ListPro 5.0 is now available. We’re very excited about this new version and we think you’re going to like what it offers. The “main event” of ListPro 5.0 is a feature that we received more requests for than any other. Pictures!

That’s right! With ListPro 5.0 you can add pictures to all your favorite lists. Link to pictures of people for your contacts list, book covers for your book collection, or maps for a list of your favorite restaurants. With a couple clicks you can easily add pictures to the notes pane of any list item.

The next big feature is the second most popular request, and that’s rich text formatting in the notes pane. Change the font, size and style or add bullets and numbering (plus the subtle, but long requested, ability to enter a TAB!) This new version completely changes the way you’ll use your lists. Plus we’ve thrown in the ability to add live links in the notes!

And of course we have a bunch of other great new features. Like HTML export! Now you can export your lists in an attractive html format file making it easy to email a list to a friend that doesn’t have ListPro (yet!) You can also export lists as XML (even selecting RSS format for those of you who would like to try using ListPro to build your RSS newsfeeds!) Throw in an updated appearance and a number of other features and fixes and we think you’ll really enjoy ListPro 5.0!

When you near the planned release date for a product, it isn’t uncommon to find yourself with features that work great and are very cool, but that you just don’t have time to fully implement. When this happens, getting the product out takes priority over adding this one last feature. This is precisely what happened with a “lost feature” that I’m going to tell you about today!

So read on to learn about one of the Lost Features of eWallet (and even try it out in your own copy of the software!)

We want to wish a very happy third birthday to Clinton Fitch (Dot) Com. Many of you may already be familiar with Clinton’s site, and for those of you who aren’t, you should definitely check it out! It’s full of mobile news and reviews of some of the coolest hardware and software out right now. And today is a good time to visit the site, because Clinton is celebrating with a contest, and you don’t want to miss out!

Congratulations, Clinton, and we wish you many more years of news and reviews to come!

There were some great discussions last month about technical support and customer service, and now it’s time to see whose comment was the chosen one for July!

This month the lucky blog contest winner is Bill Griffin, who commented on the post Support and Sunrocket Alternatives. Congratulations! I just sent you an email explaining how to get your prize. If you don’t receive it, reply to this post and let me know.

To everyone else, thanks so much for all the great comments, and be sure to keep ‘em coming, because next time it could be your chance to win!

I just finished reading (OK, skimming) an interesting book called Founders at Work, interviews with founders of famous technology companies about what happened in their earliest days. It turns out that a few of them were involved with handhelds – PayPal started out as a service by which Palm users could beam each other IOUs (do people even beam using Palms anymore? I haven’t seen anyone do that in years). Another of the founders interviewed was involved with General Magic and the long-forgotten Magic Cap handheld, which we looked at for about 2 minutes in the very early days of Ilium Software.

Another former handheld company founder who’s moved on is my friend Vidal Graupera, founder of Iambic. I first met Vidal many years ago. I don’t remember where, but I very clearly remember our conversation about what a bad idea it is to start company name with an “i“.

Anyway, Vidal has moved on, and has started a site called 5th Bar, full of useful info about, and reviews of, mobile phones and accessories, and cell phone carriers. I find roundups like this very useful – I’ve spent a lot of time lately on the VOIP reviews and roundups (see my previous post for why, and my conclusion). But I’m hoping it pays off in decent service. And I’m definitely bookmarking 5th Bar, because I’m sure that my current mobile phone won’t be my last.